On Aug 1, 2014, at 9:44 AM, Owen DeLong <owen@delong.com> wrote:
If you want examples of how well the model you propose tends to work, look no further than the incredible problematic nature of MCI’s attempt to offer local phone service over Pacific Bell/SBC/AT&T circuits.
[snip]
IMHO, experience has taught us that the lines provider (or as I prefer to call them, the Layer 1 infrastructure provider) must be prohibited from playing at the higher layers.
Owen has some really good points here, but may be overstating his case a smidge. If a private company is the Layer 1 (“lines provider”) entity, there will always be a temptation into moving up the stack, and up the value chain. The issue in his first example is that the companies involved compete for higher layer services. Municipalities can be different. It’s possible to write into law that they can offer L1 and L2 services, but never anything higher. There’s also a built in disincentive to risk tax dollars more speculative, but possibly more profitable ventures. So while I agree with Owen that a dark fiber model is preferred, and should be offered, I don’t have a problem with a municipal network also offering Layer 2. In fact, I see some potential wins, imagine a network where you could chose to buy dark fiber access, or a channel on a GPON system? If the customer wants GE/10GE, you get dark fiber, and if they want 50Mbps, you get a GPON channel for less (yes, that’s an assumption) cost. I can also see how some longer-distance links, imagine a link from home to office across 30-40 miles, might be cheaper to deliver as 100M VLAN than raw dark fiber and having to buy long reach optics. I can never see a case where letting them play at Layer 3 or above helps. That’s bad news, stay away. But I think some well crafted L2 services could actually _expand_ consumer choice. I mean running a dark fiber GigE to supply voice only makes no sense, but a 10M channel on a GPON serving a VoIP box may… -- Leo Bicknell - bicknell@ufp.org - CCIE 3440 PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/